The above photo is from the joint reading Max and I did earlier this week from our novella (tentatively titled These Violent Delights). It accurately captures most of my experience of said week: scheming to put Max in situations where he gets to talk and I get to enjoy both listening to him and watching other people enjoy listening to him.

I don’t think I’ve ever put the origin story of Max and my friendship into writing. This is for the best. But in brief: I heard him talking on a panel and decided we had to be friends. Eventually I informed him of this decision, and the rest is history.

The trip’s been a bit of a whirlwind. Max and Steph arrived on Saturday evening, having the distinction of being the first guests Stu and I have received in our new flat together. After a day or so of settling in and walking around Ottawa, we all got down to our various businesses, not least of which were reading events.

On Tuesday night, Max read from his upcoming novel, Ruin of Angels, at ChiSeries. On Wednesday afternoon, he and I read from our novella (for the first time ever! It was great!), and in the evening he did a Q&A with my short fiction workshop students. Both events were absolutely wonderful, with enthusiastic, kind audiences; many thanks to everyone who attended! Reading from the novella was especially fun — I’m still revising my parts of it, and getting to read it out loud and play it against Max’ reading offered a really neat perspective shift into what I need to address. I’m forever telling my students to read their own work aloud as they’re revising it, so it’s good to get a dose of my own advice and feel the rightness of it.

Friday evening, we appeared on CBC Radio and chatted with Alan Neal of All in a Day about footwear in fiction, the Hugos, and our novella. You can listen to our eight minutes of radio fame here! (Also admire our “wait what photo but we’re on the radio WE DRESSED FOR RADIO” faces!)

Saying goodbye to Max and Steph yesterday kind of involved crashing from a sugar-high of the soul. It was a lovely visit, full of good food and great chat and deep heart-comfort. It was also the first of what I hope will be many more visits from my US-ian friends, as borders and bans make travel prospects from this side more fraught than usual. Until then, the work waits, and while the first week of April’s been glorious, the rest of it looks likely to live up to its moniker as Cruelest Month where deadlines are concerned.

I’m writing this post and I still can’t believe it. Besides the fact that it’s the first time — besides the fact that I’d long been dreaming of having written something worthy of nomination by the time of this Worldcon, the first bid I’ve ever supported, in a place I’ve been excited to visit for years — besides the fact that it’s a story I love and feel proud of, about friendship and love overcoming unstoppable forces and immovable objects — a story that Max, by the way, helped improve —

I get, completely serendipitously, to celebrate in the city of my heart with my dear friend who’s also nominated.

This trip had been planned for months! Max and Steph are in town for a week! Tuesday night Max is reading at ChiSeries! Wednesday afternoon he and I are reading from our seekrit novella! It’s maple season! It’s end of term! The fact that we get to toast each other in this thing is immense and beautiful and good and I’m so grateful to everyone who shares my views of Max’ important, gorgeous work enough to nominate it, and so grateful to everyone who read and shared and cheered my story, because — well — you make it possible for me to do this, and you’re wonderful, and thank you so, so much.

When this post goes live, I’ll be in the penultimate class of the poetry workshop I’m teaching this term. Max will be working on copyedits. It’s the nature of the business — we have to keep working when what we want to do is party. But if you’re in Ottawa, we hope you’ll join us at one or both of our events to help us do just that!

Because we’re Hugo-nominated Authors, and we’re going to Helsinki, and it’s spring!

200 pages in: there are many orange trees in Italy and also cypresses. Also sunsets purpling the mountains and waters. FOREVER.

I’m in the middle of Volume 2 and the eponymous castle di Udolpho has been mentioned twice?

226: THEY ARRIVE AT UDOLPHO

There are 667 pages in this book.

I have so many thoughts about pace and genre and this book, but they are not thoughts for just now, because there are other thoughts about the Gothic and the Sublime and Sensibility and Nation that need to be indulged and developed for the benefit of comprehensive exams first but my goodness.

I will say that the irony of turning to Gothic novels to settle my nerves is a bit delicious. I wonder what Radcliffe would think of a time so thrumming with frantic energy that her imperilled heroine fainting in the clutches of a tyrannical Italian would make for soothing bedtime reads.

If there’s one thing I’ve found difficult to explain, these last six years, it’s how much the news stops me.

I read about the attack in London and reach for my loved ones and see the Arabic name that will stand for violence for the next several news cycles, obliterating all the other names that have perpetrated violence in order to make violence and Islam synonymous. I read about the arrest of the Israeli Jewish man who called in dozens of bomb threats to synagogues in Canada and the US and wait for news cycles about Jewish Conspiracies, obliterating the terror those thousands of people were subjected to, the trauma they’ve lived and relived. I read the news and watch people react to the news and wait for more news wrought by reading the news, and I want to throw up, and I want a voice like thunder and a tongue to drown the throat of war, and my work stops.

My work is to read and to write. My work is to read, not only novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but these poisonous narratives that arise when no one does the work of reading. When no one asks questions of narratives, of themselves, of their reactions and premises. My work is, through writing, to read the world back to people who write it with their fear and their fury and hatred, to say, sometimes gently, is this what you meant, and to say, often less gently, this is what you’re saying, and what you’re saying is evil.

I’m off social media not because I want to ignore the world, but because I need to keep it at arm’s length so that I can engage with it at all. Because the alternative is to be stopped, always. To be paralysed by what rushes through me, electricity forcing me into remaining a closed circuit.

I’m not sure where to take that metaphor. But I am getting back to work.

First, my March column for Lightspeed is now available online, talking about how and why so many sequels last year were wonderful, with special focus on Mishell Baker’s Phantom Pains and N. K. Jemisin’s The Obelisk Gate.

Second, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories was reviewed in The New York Times! My name is there! Coupled with “poetic prose”! In the NYT! This is the first time* I’m aware of that happening.

* If it happened before and you didn’t tell me — how could you!**

** Unless it was bad! I’m glad you didn’t tell me if it was bad. Thank you. You’re the best.

Walking to my office today, the day tending to warm, the earth thawing into mud, I kept thinking, this is my first spring in Canada in a long time. I felt this very deeply, even as I asked myself how that could be true; I’ve been back to living in Canada since January 2015. Surely it’s my third spring here in a row?

But last year at this time I was in Orlando; the year before that I spent most of April in Scotland, in agonies over how long it would take to bring my fiancé to Canada; in both cases I was drowning in work, commutes, transnational and transatlantic travel.

This year… I step outside, and the feeling of bare sidewalk under my shoes spells spring. I keep taking photos of glistening mud, soggy grasses, pebbles escaping the ice.

I have to ask myself in part if it’s having stepped outside of social media’s frenzy — having made space in my mind for noticing slow, deep change. I’m still far too busy — huge academic deadlines on April 1 and May 1 on top of teaching two courses, an important grant application deadline on April 19, to name a few — but I’ve felt myself present, I’ve felt myself in possession of agency enough to do my work. The curse of social media for me in this climate is a feeling of being reduced to passive, helpless horror minute on minute, unable to see my own life as something I can affect. But I can, and I do, and I will.

This weekend, with the help of my mighty brother-in-law, Stu and I reconfigured two rooms in our apartment in a way I had been longing for and dreading in equal measure for months. We hired a truck, picked up a new bed, moved the old bed into the office, assembled the new bed in spite of lacking instructions and and a few screws. There’s a lot of work yet to make the office into a welcoming space for guests, but the bones are there.

I look at that list of things we did and marvel at the change they’ve wrought in me — as if moving furniture dislodged something stuck in my head and chest, made it easier to breathe. It seems so simple. It was hard work — we sweated and grunted and got very hungry. But we did it, and it’s done, and now there’s work I look forward to, like hanging art on walls and deep-cleaning every room and buying new bedclothes.

This, too, feels of a piece with spring: obstacles dissolving, snowmelt carving furrows through ice and cold earth, breaking new paths, finding new ways to move. This space between freezing and budding, when the light stays long enough to see you home, when the air tastes good enough to drink — it’s more precious to me than I can say.

If you’re trying to raise your STEALTH stat, you could do worse than study award nomination deadlines, as they successfully sneak attack me multiple times a year.

The Hugos! From the ballot guidelines:

The deadline for nominations is 17 March 2017 at 11:59pm Pacific Daylight Time (2:59am Eastern Daylight Time, 0659 Greenwich Mean Time, 0859 in Finland, all on 18 March)

Here, in a haphazard, slipshod way, are some suggestions for things I think deserve to be on the ballot, with a focus on people and stuff that I don’t see talked about a lot (though of course I’ve been off social media for a couple of weeks and maybe everyone’s talking about this stuff, who knows!)

Whether or not you consider any of these for your ballot, I hope you’ll explore the works and people behind them, as they’re all super great and this post took me way longer to write than I expected it to. It’s WILDLY incomplete, but I can’t spare the time to be rigorous, so I’ve tried to focus on the categories I feel don’t get a ton of attention or diversity year on year.

Best Fancast:

Storyological, by Chris Kammerud and E. G. Cosh. Two smart, utterly charming writers talk to each other for 20 minutes about two short stories. I love this podcast completely — if I haven’t read the stories, I want to seek them out, and if I have, I feel like I’m part of a great conversation. Always positive, often quirky, the hosts are fabulous readers, zooming in on their favourite bits and discussing why they love them with sharp, tender insight. Also they laugh together a lot, which makes me happy.

Midnight in Karachi, by Mahvesh Murad. Mahvesh interviews writers and is great at it! I love listening to these conversations.

Unjustly Maligned, by Antony Johnston. Antony invites people to come on his show and defend a thing they love that most people don’t love. I was recently on this (defending the V for Vendetta movie) and in order to prepare for it I listened to some episodes, and it’s just brilliant — a great concept led by a wonderful host that always results in great chat.

House to Astonish, by Al Kennedy and Paul O’Brien. The best comics podcast. You can quote me on that.

Best Fan/Pro Artist:

Can we please give Likhain a Hugo already? Her work undoes me and remakes me and I just want to live in her use of colour. I’m nominating her in both categories because rules are confusing and I think she’s eligible in both but also come on. LOOK AT THIS.

This is a category that sees a lot of the same names year on year, and with good reason — Galen Dara and Julie Dillon keep putting out breathtaking work on the covers of books and pro magazines and they’re brilliant. But I’d really love to see Jeffrey Alan Love considered this year: his book Notes from the Shadowed City is stunning (and is also a Best Graphic Story pick for me), his cover for Cassandra Khaw’s Hammers on Bone likewise, and that’s just off the top of my head. His stuff just leaps out at me, and his technique for creating the textures in his work is so elegantly simple, watching it happen is like seeing someone perform a magic trick while explaining to you how it’s done without diminishing any of the wonder.

I wonder if I can come up with more to continue the Graphic City theme. Hmm.

Best Short Form Editor:

I exist in perpetual awe of and gratitude for editors. The teams at Strange Horizons, Uncanny, Clarkesworld and Lightspeed all deserve your consideration, but I’d like to highlight some others whose work I think deserves serious praise.

Rose Lemberg‘s been a force for good in genre for years, always keen to showcase and support marginalised voices, especially queer people of colour. Rose is equal parts generous and fierce, and I admire them tremendously; I partly modeled Warda from “Pockets” on them. Their relentless advocacy humbles and inspires me. Last year saw the publication of An Alphabet of Embers, a small feast of unclassifiable jewels, which makes them eligible.

Mike Allen, likewise, is one of the hardest working editors I know, and certainly one I think deserves more recognition. He labours tirelessly on behalf of his authors, takes mentorship very seriously, and has been in the business of editing without being recognised for it since … At least 2005, when I think we started talking? But he’s only gotten better year on year. The Clockwork Phoenix anthologies are magnificent accomplishments, Mythic Deliriumwas one of the first genre zines I read regularly, and he’s basically superb.

With the publication of The Starlit Wood, Dominik Parisien‘s count of Stuff He Has Edited is officially 4, the minimum number required for consideration. He would never ever put himself forward and is one of my favourite people in the world entire, so I am here to shill for him. I don’t think I know anyone who loves editing the way Dominik does, for whom it’s both sacred calling and geekery: he’s staggeringly good at editing stories and at curating them. His sense of editorial narrative in a collection is superb, and I always look forward to anything he’s had a hand in. While The Starlit Wood, co-edited with Navah Wolfe, got the most press last year, his work on Clockwork Canadawas wonderful and important, and definitely worth acknowledging.

Best Long Form Editor:

This is another category that sees a lot of the same names year on year — I think partly because so much of what a long form editor does is invisible to a reading public. With magazines, you’ll usually have some kind of editorial note about content and curation; with novels, not so much.

I’d like to put Navah Wolfe on your radar.

As far as I’m concerned, Navah Wolfe is the Leslie Knope of publishing. I’ve only worked with her on short form stuff, but I’ve developed a keen appreciation for her editorial vision across multiple Saga Press novels, and I’ve had the privilege of glimpsing her process and how hard she works for her authors. She is literally half an imprint. Every novel she’s edited that I’ve read, I’ve loved. One of those novels, Borderline by Mishell Baker, is currently up for a Nebula Award, and its sequel Phantom Pains is even better.

Navah and I often share hotel rooms at cons but I’m not sure whether or not she actually sleeps? She’s fierce on her authors’ behalf and brilliant and funny and generous and kind and utterly devoted to her work. I would love to see that work recognized.

My Own Stuff:

The only fiction of mine from last year that I’d like considered is “Seasons of Glass and Iron,” from The Starlit Wood anthology edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe. I think it’s the best thing I wrote last year. Other than that, I’m on two podcasts which are eligible for Fancast: Down and Safe, a podcast about Blake’s 7 with L M Myles, Scott Lynch, and Michael D Thomas,and Walkthrough, in which Julia Rios, Layla Al-Bedawi and I discuss every episode of the game The Walk.

AAHHH! All five Craft Sequence books are available as an e-omnibus for $12!!!

If you don’t know my feelings about Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence you probably haven’t known me very long. But you’re in luck! I reviewed the series (up to the third book) as a whole for NPR Books a couple of years ago, and it’s only gotten better since then. Five books for $12 would be a pretty sweet deal under most circumstances, but these books are brilliant and witty and sharp and smart and push me to parataxis, so, you know, go get them!

I miss the Toast. Where else can I pitch an article about Beyoncé and writing fantasy and trust it will find its truest audience?

*

Today I’m wearing a key on a necklace. It turns no locks. It hangs between either side of the lanyard on which I wear the keys to my offices on two campuses. I can’t look at my chest without thinking about ornament and utility and the significance of choosing or not choosing between them.

*

This photo is overexposed and blurry but I love it and keep pulling it up to look at it.

*

A Marceline funko-pop sits on my desk, behind a red button-pin exhorting the world to Drop Student Debt. I can’t look at her without smiling, but lately I find myself substituting “Marceline” for “Jacqueline” in the Franz Ferdinand song and writing Adventure Time fanfic through the lyrics in my head while I should be finishing Caleb Williams.

One of the stretch goals for Uncanny‘s Year 2 Kickstarter campaign was a movie column by Max Gladstone and me, in which we chat about a film we’ve seen recently, kicking it podcast-style (or discussed-in-gchat-style, which is more or less the same thing). Said goal was reached, and you can read our first column here!

In it we discuss Rogue One, at length with several rambly asides, detouring into The Great Escape, Walter Benjamin, and Rudolph Otto’s conception of the holy. As you do!